This is all well and good Craig, the exact reply I expected from you because this is pretty much your standard reasoning in foreign policy. Yet you are missing something here. However the Pakistani government may or may not be "justified" because another country, say the US, might do the same thing in circumstances vaguely resembling this, almost everything a government does is either to curry favor amongst its own populace, or for some other reason but where - at a minimum - the populace will not oppose the action (or where the act might be opposed but is not especially visible to the populace, but that does not apply here). That's the real politik from the standpoint of the Pakistani government.
So the question is, why would the better part of the Pakistani populace favor punishing fellow Pakistanis who helped bring down Osama Bin Laden?
A second question I raise is whether this is good foreign policy for Pakistan, particularly given all the financial aid we provide, but I'm really more interested in an answer to the first question for now.
- wolf
I think one reason a government does things is to curry favor with the citizens, but it's only one; there are others such as protecting its own 'interests'.
For example, regimes such as in Syria or Yemen aren't doing things to curry favor with citizens, as they shoot said citizens.
The idea that the citizens of Pakistan are widely pro-bin Laden is ok as a theory, but it's not shown simply by the facts of the government taking these actions.
In fact, while there are clearly some supporters of bin Laden (just as there are some supporters of Ollie North and G. Gordon Liddy and Luis Pasada Carriles here), I've seen info that many don't. Whether or not it's the case, you can't conclude it is simply from these actions.
As for more to the answer to your first question, I don't know the Pakistani people (we do hear from a couple here), so I can only speculate, but I can say that in an action such as we took with bin Laden, how much he 'deserved' to be killed is only one factor typically in how people react, others including everything from the resentment of the violation of your country's sovereignity to the issue of your government being a 'paid lapdog' for the world's largest military and more - people naturally resent those things.
We could be the most benevolent country around to another nation, and still get resentment and rebellion from that nation if we appear too overbearing.
Some of the organizations we don't like - the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas - have a lot of people who feel those orgaizations are a lot better to them than the US is.
It comes with being such a foreign presence - some of the resentment deserved, some not.
If the US captured a Mexican terrorist on US soil, most Americans would support it. But if Mexico sent its military into an American city to assassinate the same terrorist if he had attacked Mexico, the American people would probably be furious with Mexico - and the US government would likely go after Americans who had acted as Mexico's agents planning it. bin Laden is our enemy more than the people of Pakistan's - even if they don't like him.
This whole 'you had better act as we want you to to help in fighting our enemies, or you are our enemy' attitude isn't well liked; it can create sympathy for the bad guys.
Again imagine Mexico telling us we had better do as they want to help catch someone they're after or we'll be just as much their enemy. We'd like that.
As to your second question - of course there's a price, as I said, to doing it, but you are asking them to act like nice lapdogs and put the US ahead of their sovereignity - which is just the sort of thing that infuriates less powerful countries, including helping them view our 'aid' as something to resent that's 'buying off' their government's loyalty.
Your question is like asking, 'is publicly complaining about the mafia a good way to keep from having them punish you?' Well, no it's not, but there are reasons to do it.
When citizens act as the agents for a foreign power - even an ally- who then invades - even with good reason - it's going to create issues inviting this sort of response.
Pakistan has to weigh the issue of appearing not to be 'doing enough' against Al Queda against appearing to being walked on by the US, being paid off.
Change the names involved and consider the same situation, and ask how surprising it is for them to arrest the citizens who aided a foreign invader.
And what they do here does set a precedent for future operations that are not as compelling as bin Laden. What if we started to do operations regularly?
Edit: Wikipedia cites a poll suggesting support for my suggestion that the arrests might not be about public support for Al Queda as you suspect, but other reasons:
In Pakistan, despite the recent rise in the Taliban's influence, a poll conducted by Terror Free Tomorrow in Pakistan in January 2008 tested support for al-Qaida, the Taliban, other militant Islamist groups and Osama bin Laden himself, and found a recent drop by half. In August 2007, 33% of Pakistanis expressed support for al-Qaida; 38% supported the Taliban. By January 2008, al-Qaida's support had dropped to 18%, the Taliban's to 19%. When asked if they would vote for al-Qaida, just 1% of Pakistanis polled answered in the affirmative. The Taliban had the support of 3% of those polled
Facebook
Twitter